Chapter 5

Her voice broke; he saw her slender body convulsed with racking emotions. Kneeling, Lanyard made a hasty and superficial examination, necessarily no more under the conditions.

"His heart beats," he announced--"he breathes. I do not think him seriously injured." He made as if to get up. "I will get a light--a flash-lamp from my stateroom--or, better still, the ship's surgeon--"

Her hand fell upon his arm. "Please, no! Not that--not now. Later, if necessary; but now--surely, you can help me carry him to his stateroom."

"You know the number?"

"It's close by--30."

"Find it, and light up. No--leave this to me; I can carry him without assistance."

The girl rose and disappeared. Lanyard passed his arms beneath the Englishman's body, gathered him into them, and struggled to his feet: no inconsiderable task.

Light gushed from an open doorway, the third aft from the landing. Staggering, the adventurer entered and deposited the body upon the berth. Immediately the girl closed and bolted the door, then passed between him and the berth to bend over the unconscious man. He lay in deep coma, limbs a-sprawl, unpleasant glints of white between his half-closed eyelids, his breathing stertorous through parted lips. Free of its sling, his wounded arm dangled over the edge of the berth. In putting him down, Lanyard had remarked that its sleeve had been slit to the shoulder, and that its bandages were undone. Now, in amazement, he saw the arm was firm and muscular, with an unbroken skin, never a sign of any injury in all its length.

Gently the girl lifted the lieutenant's head to the light, discovering a hideously bruised swelling at the base of the skull, blood darkly matting the close-clipped hair.

She requested without looking round: "Water, please--and a towel."

Obediently Lanyard ran hot and cold water into the hand-basin in equal proportions.

"Would it not be well now to call the ship's surgeon?" he suggested diffidently.

"Is that necessary? I am something of a nurse. This is simply a bad contusion--no worse, I believe. He was struck down from behind, a cowardly blow in the dark, as he started to go up on deck. I had been waiting for him. When he didn't come I suspected something was wrong. I came down, found him lying there, that brute kneeling over him."

She spoke coolly enough, in contrast with the high excitement that inflamed her eyes as she turned away from the berth.

"Monsieur Duchemin, are you armed?"

"I have this," he said, exhibiting the knife thrown by the would-be murderer--a simple trench dagger, without distinguishing marks of any sort.

"Then take this, please." Extracting an automatic pistol from a holster belted beneath Thackeray's coat, she proffered it. "You won't mind staying here a moment, standing guard, while I fetch a dressing from my room?"

Before he could utter a word of protest she had slipped out into the alleyway, shutting the door behind her.

When several minutes had passed the adventurer found himself beset by increasing concern. This long delay seemed not only inconsistent with her solicitude, but indicated a possibility that the girl had braved unwisely the chance of a resumption of hostilities on the part of her late and as yet anonymous assailant.

Darkening the room as a matter of common-sense precaution, Lanyard, pistol in hand, stepped out into the alleyway in time to see the girl in the act of rising from her knees on the landing, near the spot where Thackeray had fallen. The light of her flash-lamp was blotted out as she came hurriedly aft.

Perplexed, he turned back and switched on the light as she entered.

Her eyes challenged his almost defiantly.

"Was I long?" she asked, breathless. "I dropped something...."

Lanyard bowed without speaking. Instinctively he knew that she was lying; and divining this in his attitude, she coloured and, disconcerted, turned away. For a moment, while she busied herself arranging on a convenient chair an assortment of first-aid accessories, he fancied that her half-averted face wore a look of sullen chagrin, with its compressed lips, downcast eyes, and faintly gathered brows.

But directly she needed assistance, and requested it of him in a subdued and impersonal manner, showing a countenance devoid of any incongruous emotion.

Lanyard, lifting the lieutenant's head and heavy torso, helped turn him face downward on the berth, then stood aside, thoughtfully watching the girl's deft fingers sop absorbent cotton in an antiseptic wash and apply it to the injury.

After a little, he said: "If mademoiselle has no more immediate use for me--"

"Thank you, monsieur. You have already done so very much!"

"Then, if mademoiselle will supply the name of this assassin--"

"I know it no more than you, monsieur!" She glanced up at him, startled. "What do you mean to do?"

"Why, naturally, lodge an information with the captain concerning this outrage--"

"Oh, please, no!"

At a loss, Lanyard shrugged eloquently.

"Not yet, at all events," she hastened to amend. "Let Lionel judge what is best to be done when he comes to."

"But, mademoiselle, who can say when that will be?" He pointed out the ugly, ragged abrasion in the young Englishman's scalp exposed by the cleansing away of the clotted blood. "No ordinary blow," he commented; "something very like a slung-shot or a loaded cane did that work. If I may venture again to advise--unless mademoiselle is herself a surgeon--"

Her colour faded and she caught her breath sharply. "You think it as serious as all that?"

"I do not know. Such a blow might easily fracture the skull, possibly bring about a concussion of the brain. Regard, likewise, his laborious breathing. I most assuredly advise consulting competent authority."

She did not immediately answer, turning back undivided attention to her task; but he noticed that her hands were tremulous, however, dextrously they finished dressing and bandaging the hurt; and deep distress troubled the handsome eyes she turned to his when she rose.

"You are right," she murmured--"unquestionably right, monsieur. We must have the surgeon in...."

But when Lanyard advanced a hand toward the bell-push, to call the steward, she interposed in quick alarm:

"No--if you please, a moment; I must have time to think!" Her slender fingers writhed together in her agony of doubt and irresolution. "If only I knew what to do...."

Lanyard was dumb. There was, indeed, nothing helpful he could offer, who was without a solitary tangible or trustworthy clue to the nature of this strange business.

He owned himself sadly mystified. In the light--or, rather, the shadow--of this latest development, his revised suspicions seemed unwarranted to the point of impertinence; unless, of course, one assumed the unknown assailant to be a rejected lover or wronged husband. And somehow one did not, in the presence of this clear-eyed, straight-limbed, courageous young Englishwoman, so wanting in self-consciousness.

And yet ... what the deuce was she to this man whom, indisputably, she followed against his wish?

And what conceivable chain of circumstances linked their fortunes with his, and that double burglary of the first night out with this murderous assault of to-night?

Nor was to-night's work, considered by itself, lacking in questionable features.

Why had Thackeray carried that sound arm in a sling? How had its bandages come to be unwrapped? Not in struggles before being placed hors de combat, for he had never had a chance to resist. Had his assailant, then, unwrapped it subsequently? If so, with what end in view?

Why had this Miss Cecelia Brooke, surprising the thug at his work, joined battle with him so bravely and so madly without calling for help?

What hidden motive excused this singular hesitation to summon the surgeon, this reluctance to inform the officers of the ship?

What duplicity was that which the girl had paraded concerning her procrastination when Lanyard had surprised her on her knees out there on the landing?

If this were what Lanyard had first inclined to think it, Secret Service intrigue, surely it was weirdly intricate when an English girl hesitated to safeguard an Englishman by taking into her confidence the officers of a British ship, British manned!

Nevertheless, and however much he might wonder and doubt, Lanyard would never question her. Never of his own volition would he probe more deeply into this mystery, take one farther step into the intricacies of its maze.

So, in silence, he waited, passively courteous, at her further service if she had need of him, content if she had not, tolerant of her tacit prayer for time in which to think a way out of her difficulties.

After some few moments he grew uncomfortably aware that he had become the object of a speculative regard not at all unfavourable.

He indulged in a mental gesture of resignation.

Then what he had feared befell, not altogether as he had apprehended, but in the girl's own fashion, if without material difference in the upshot.

"I am afraid," said she in an even voice, so quietly pitched as to be inaudible to any eavesdropper. "This becomes a task greater than I had dreamed, more than my wits can cope with. Monsieur Duchemin...."

She hesitated. He bowed slightly. "If mademoiselle can make any use of my poor abilities, she has but to command me."

"We--I have much to thank you for already, monsieur, much more than I can ever hope to reward adequately--"

"Reward?" he echoed. "But, mademoiselle--!"

"Please don't misunderstand." She flushed a little, very prettily. "I am simply trying to express my sense of obligation, not only for what you have already done, but for what I mean to ask you to do."

Again he bowed, without comment, amiably receptive.

She resumed with perceptible effort: "I can trust you--"

"You must make sure of that before you do," he warned her, smiling.

"I am sure," she averred gravely.

"You know nothing concerning me, mademoiselle--pardon! For all you know I may be the greatest rogue in Christendom. And I must tell you in all candour, sometimes I think I am."

"What I may or may not know concerning you, Monsieur Duchemin, is immaterial as long as I know you are what you have proved yourself to me, a gentleman, considerate, generous, brave, and--not inquisitive."

He was frankly touched. If this were flattery, tone and manner robbed it of fulsomeness, rendered it subtle beyond the coarser perceptions of the man. He knew himself for what he was, knew himself unworthy; and that part of him which was unaffectedly French, whether by accident of birth or influence of environment, and so impulsive and emotional, reacted in spontaneous gratitude to this implicit acceptance of him for what he strove to seem to be.

"Mademoiselle is gracious beyond my deserts," he protested. "Only let me know how I may be of use...."

"In three ways: Continue to be lenient in your judgments, and ask me no more questions than you must because ... I may not answer...." Her hands worked together again. She added unhappily, in a faint voice: "I dare not."

That, too, moved him, since he had been far from lenient in his judgments. He responded the more readily: "All that is understood, mademoiselle."

"Please go at once back to your stateroom, and as quietly as possible. There is a bare chance you were not recognised, that nobody knows who came to my aid to-night. If you can slip away without attracting attention, so much the better for us, for all of us. You may not be suspected."

"Trust me to use my best discretion."

"Lastly ... take and keep this for me, till I ask you for it again. Hide it as secretly as you can. It may be sought for, is certain to be if you are believed to be in my confidence. It must not be found. And I may not want it again before we land in New York."

She extended a hand on whose palm rested a small and slender white cylinder, no longer and little thicker than the toy pencil that dangles from a dance-card: a tight roll of plain white paper enclosed in a wrapping of transparent oiled silk, gummed fast down its length and, at either end, sealed with miniature blobs of black wax.

"Will you do this for me, Monsieur Duchemin? I warn you, it may cost you your life."

He took it, his temper veering to the whimsical. "What is life?" he questioned. "A prelude--perhaps an overture to that great drama, Death. Who knows? Who cares?"

She heard him in a stare. "You place no value on life?"

"Mademoiselle," he said, "I have lived nearly thirty years in this world, three years in the theatre of war, seldom far from the trenches of one front or another. I tell you, I know death too well...."

He shrugged and put the roll of paper away in a pocket.

"You understand it must not be taken from you under any circumstance? As a last resort, it must be destroyed rather than yielded up."

"It shall be," he said quietly. "Is there anything more?"

She shook her head, thoughtfully knuckling her underlip.

"How can I communicate with you in event of necessity after we get to New York?" she asked.

"I shall stop for a week or two at the Hotel Knickerbocker."

"If anything should happen"--with a swift glance of anxiety toward the motionless figure in the berth--"if anything should prevent my calling for it within a week after our arrival, you will be good enough to deliver it to--" She caught herself up quickly, the unuttered words trembling on her lip. "I will write down the address of the person to whom you will deliver it, and slip it underneath the door between our rooms--first making certain you are there to receive it--if I do not ask you to return the--thing--before we land."

"That shall be as you will."

"When you have memorized the address you will destroy it?"

"Depend on that."

"I think that is all. Thank you, Monsieur Duchemin--and good-night."

She extended her hand. He saluted it punctiliously with fingertips and lips.

"If you will put out the light, mademoiselle, it may aid me to get away unseen."

She nodded and offered him Thackeray's pistol. "Take this. O, I have another with me."

Lanyard accepted the weapon and, when she had darkened the room, opened the door, slipped out, and closed it behind him so noiselessly that the girl could not believe he was gone.

Nothing hindered his return to Stateroom 29.

Fully two minutes after he had locked himself in he heard the distant clamour of the annunciator, calling a steward to Stateroom 30.

VI

UNDER SUSPICION

He sat for a long time on the edge of his berth, elbow on knee, chin in hand, unstirring, gaze fixed upon that little cylinder of white paper resting in the hollow of his palm, in profoundest concentration pondering the problems it presented: what it was, what possession of it meant to Michael Lanyard, what safe disposition to make of it pending welcome relief from this unsought and most unwelcome trust.

This last question alone bade fair to confound his utmost ingenuity.

As for what it was, Lanyard was well satisfied that he now held the true focus of this conspiracy, a secret of the first consequence, far too momentous to the designs of England to be entrusted, though couched in the most cryptic cipher ever mind of man devised, even to cables or mails which England herself controlled.

Solely to prevent this communication from reaching America, Lanyard believed, Germany had sown mines broadcast in all the waters which the _Assyrian_ must cross, and had commissioned her U-boats, without fail and at whatever cost, to sink the vessel if by any accident she won safely through the mine-fields.

In the effort to steal this secret, German spies had sailed on the _Assyrian_ knowing well the double risk they ran, of being shot like rats if found out, of being drowned like neutrals if the ship went down through the efforts of their compatriots.

It was the zeal of Potsdam's agents, seeking the bearer of this secret, which had caused the rifling of Miss Brooke's luggage when she fell under suspicion, thanks to her clandestine way of coming aboard; and through the same agency young Thackeray had been all but murdered when suspicion, for whatever reason, shifted to him.

To insure safe transmission of this communication, England had held the _Assyrian_ idle in port, day after day, while her augmented patrols scoured the seas, hunting down ruthlessly every submarine whose periscope dared peer above the surface, and while her trawlers innumerable swept the channels clear of mines.

To prevent its theft, Lieutenant Thackeray had invented the subterfuge of the "wounded" arm, amid whose splints and bandages (Lanyard never doubted) the cylinder had been secreted.

Finally, it was as a special agent, deep in her country's confidence, that this English girl had smuggled herself aboard at the last moment, bringing, no doubt, this very cylinder to be transferred to the keeping of Lieutenant Thackeray or, perhaps, another confrere, should she find reason to think herself suspected, her trust endangered.

Nothing strange in that; women had served their countries in such capacities before; the secret archives of European chancellories are replete with their records. Lanyard himself remembered many such women, brilliant mondaines from many lands domiciled in that Paris of the so-dead yesterday to serve by stealth their respective governments; but never, it was true, a woman of the caste of Cecelia Brooke; unless, indeed, this were an actress of surpassing talent, gifted to hoodwink the most skeptical and least susceptible of men.

And yet....

Lanyard's train of thought faltered. New doubt of the girl began to shadow his meditations. Contradictory circumstances he had noted intruded, uninvited, to challenge overcredulous conclusions concerning her.

Would any secret agent worth her salt invite suspicion by making such a conspicuously furtive embarkation, by such ostentatious avoidance of her fellow passengers, by surrounding herself with an atmosphere of such palpable mystery? Would such an one confess she had a "secret" to an utter stranger, as she had to Lanyard that first night out? Would she, under any conceivable circumstances, entrust to that same stranger that selfsame secret upon whose inviolate preservation so much depended?

And would she make love-trysts on the decks by night?

Would a brother-agent take her in his arms, then reprove her with every symptom of vexation for her "madness," her "insanity," her "nonsense" that was like to "drive me mad"?--Thackeray's own words!

Vainly Lanyard cudgelled his wits for some plausible reading of this riddle.

Was this Brooke girl possibly (of a sudden he sat bolt upright) a Prussian agent infatuated with this young Englishman and by him beloved in spite of all that forbade their passion?

Did not this explanation reconcile every apparent inconsistency in her conduct, even to the entrusting to a stranger of the stolen secret, the purloined paper she dared not keep about her lest it be found in her possession?

Lanyard's eyes narrowed. Visibly his features hardened. If this surmise of his were any way justified in the outcome, he promised Miss Cecelia Brooke an hour of most painful penitence.

Woman or not, she need not look for mercy from him, who must ever be merciless in his dealings with Ekstrom's crew.

To be made that one's tool!

The very thought was intolerable....

As for himself, possession of this paper meant that pitfalls were digged for his every step.

If ever the British found cause to suspect him, his certain portion would be to face a firing squad in dusk of early day.

If, on the other hand, these Prussian agents on board the _Assyrian_ ever got wind of the fact that the cylinder was in his care, his fate was apt to be a knife between his ribs the first time he was caught alone and--with his back to the assassin.

Two courses, then, were open to him: the most sensible and obvious, to go straightway to the captain of the _Assyrian_, report all that he knew or surmised, and turn over the paper for safekeeping; one alternative, to hide the cylinder so absolutely that the most drastic search would overlook it, yet so handily that he could rid himself of it at an instant's notice.

But the first course involved denunciation of the Brooke girl. And what if she were innocent? What if, after all, these doubts of her were the specious spawn of facts misinterpreted, misconstrued? What if she proved to be all she seemed? Could he, even though what he had warned her he might be, the greatest rogue unhung, be false to a trust reposed in him by such a woman?

As to that, there was no question in his mind; he would never betray her, lacking irrefutable conviction that she was an employee of the Prussian spy system.

Then how to hide the paper?

Kneeling, Lanyard drew from beneath the berth his bellows-bag, selected from its contents a black japanned tin case containing a rather elaborate though compact trench medicine kit, the idle purchase of an empty afternoon in London. Extracting from its fittings a small leather-covered case, he replaced the kit, relocked and shoved the bag back beneath the berth.

Then, standing over the hand-basin, he opened the leather-covered case. Its velvet-lined compartments held a hypodermic syringe and needle, and a glass phial of twenty-four one-thirtieth grain morphia tablets.

Uncorking the phial, he shook out all the tablets, replaced three, then slid the paper cylinder into the tube; it fitted precisely, concealed by the label of the manufacturing chemist, leaving room for six more tablets. Lanyard inserted four on top of the cylinder, moistening the lowermost slightly to make it stick, recorked the phial, and returned it to its compartment.

Next he dissolved three morphia tablets in a little water in the bottom of a glass, filled the syringe with the strong solution, fitted on the needle, squirted most of the contents down the waste-pipe, and consigned the remaining tablets to the same innocuous fate.

Finally he replaced needle and syringe in the case, let the glass which had held the solution stand without rinsing, and put the open case upon the shelf above the basin.

A light tapping sounded on the panels of his door.

"Well? Who's there?"

"Your steward, sir. Captain Osborne's compliments, an' 'e'd like to see you in 'is room as soon as convenient, sir."

"You may say I will come at once."

"'Nk you, sir."

A summons to have been expected as a sequel to the surgeon's report after attending Lieutenant Thackeray; none the less, Lanyard had not expected it so soon.

Authority, he reflected, ran true to form afloat as well as ashore; it was prompt enough when required to apply a pound or so of cure. Surely the officers, at least the captain, must have been advised why this voyage was apt to prove exceptionally hazardous; and surely in the light of such information it had been wiser to set armed watches on every deck by night, rather than permit the lives of passengers to be imperilled through the possible activities of Prussian agents among them incogniti.

And now that he was reminded of it, was not this, perhaps, but a device of the enemy's to decoy him from the comparative safety of his stateroom?

It was with a hand in his jacket pocket, grasping Thackeray's automatic, that he presently left the room. The alleyway, however, was deserted except for his steward; who, as he appeared, turned and led the way up to the boat-deck.

Rounding the foot of the companionway, Lanyard contrived a hasty glance down the port alleyway. The door to Stateroom 30 was on the hook; a light burned within. Outside a guard was stationed, a sailor with a cutlass: the first application of the pound of cure!